So, the full roster is now here for the Indiana Fever with Demirus Dantis who had previously not been in the States because she was suffering from visa issues. She has now been allowed to enter the states and as you can see here, Namirus Dantis is back in Indiana. The thing is when it comes to Demirus Dantis, I think there’s always going to be the positive and the negative when it comes to Dantis and people’s opinions of Dantis.
The negative, she’s been really bad. She was very poor in her first season with Indiana, but I think a lot of people kind of wrote it off because she showed up injured and she was evidently slow and she lost a whole bunch of weight coming into year two and then she forgot to shoot. She forgot to shoot.
She doesn’t really know how to roll. I know we’re trying to find the positives here with Deir’s Dantis. The positives is that she’s on a minimum contract and worst case scenario, she is a perfectly acceptable backup or third stringer. She is an acceptable third stringer. Yeah. That is what I’ll say.
She is a perfectly acceptable third stringer and to get that player on a minimum deal is okay and a two-year minimum deal. One thing with that is her contract is almost certainly guaranteed because it is a multi-year deal. And a lot of people are like, “Oh, will they cut Dandis?” I don’t think they are actually able to cut Dandis.
A lot of people are asking for Misha Hines Allen to be cut after yesterday. I’m just saying with Misha Hines Allen, she does what she feels like. That’s the only thing I will say about MHJ is that sometimes good, sometimes maybe bad. I think that was Gatuso. That’s the case when it comes down to May Shines Allen is that she’s going to have good games. She’s going to have some games she’s the worst player on the floor.
The good thing is that the Indiana Fever are good enough that unlike the Wings, she can sit on the bench if she’s being the worst player on the floor. But yeah, it is now one of these things where Deir’s Dantis is a kind of key player for the Fever this year because she’s going to have to back up Aaliyah Boston which is not an easy job to do.
Backing up Aaliyah is not something that anybody likes. It’s not a thing that’s going to be easy for anyone to do, especially this version of Aaliyah. And she’s going to be duking it out with Mo Billings, Deir, Mo Billings, Mines Allen and KK Timson for minutes.
And look, she’s a player who played her way in and out of rotation last year, but if you ever watch Deir Stantis when she’s playing for Brazil she’s the best player in the world. It’s FIBA Patty Mills. She averaged 22 points per game in World Cup qualifying. 21.4 points per game in America Cup. Like she averaged 22 points per game.
And it’s not like this Brazil team had nobody. If you’re looking, she played Belgium who were pretty decent. But if you look at the Brazil team, second top scorer, seven more points than Camil Cardoso. She averaged seven boards and was third on the team in blocks per game.
She was by far the best player on the team with Kamil Cardoso as well. They went two and three. They didn’t make it, did they? I don’t think they made it. I think it was China, wasn’t it? Did Czech Republic make it? So, Belgium, China, and Mali made it.
Did Brazil lose to Mali? No, they beat Mali, lost to China, lost to Czech Republic by 21. What did Emma Czechova have in that game? It was a young player who the Lynx signed and Fever just said, “You know what? Nah.”
Czechova had 12. But either way, when I said what did Czechova have, she had 12. Dantis had 30 in that game. Dantis had 30 against Czech Republic. What did she have in other games? She had 30 against Czech Republic, 25 against South Sudan, and 26 against China in a game where had they beaten China, they would have made the World Cup.
So she had some big games there. She had some real big games. And look, this is a player that worst case scenario, she’s a good locker room player, a good locker room presence. And that is the worst of the worst, that she’s a good locker room presence. If she ends up stinking it up, she’s good to just have there.
The problem is that when you’ve got the choice that the Indiana Fever have to make now likely between Pat and KK, it becomes really tough when it comes to Justine Pat versus KK Timson.
That being said, Dantis and Mines Allen being on guaranteed deals means it’s like do the Indiana Fever need to stock up on more bigs or do the Fever need to stock up on big wings? And that’s really where the question comes down to.
But when it comes down to it, Deirus Dantis is realistically going to be there for the Fever. She’s going to be there for the start. I think she might genuinely be in the rotation game one.
And look, if Dantis is hitting her shots, cool. It’s a stretch big. Problem is that Dantis has not been really hitting her shots the last while.
So yeah, I am hoping in general that Dantis ends up coming and Dantis ends up being a real positive force for the Indiana Fever. And there’s always a chance of it happening. And I do hope that is the case.
I hope when it comes down to it, Deir Stantis goes and has a really positive impact for the Fever and she plays, she shoots like she did in 2021 and moves like she did in 2024 and 2025. That would be an ideal scenario for the Fever.
I just don’t know if that happens with Amir Standis. I really don’t know if it happens.
On a plus side, anyone who’s been a fan of this channel long enough knows every time I complain about Dantis being on the floor, she scores. Anytime I’m like, “You know what, yes, Dantis is going to be good,” she stinks it up.
It is one of these things where it’s always odd when I predict something the opposite normally comes true as seen by the fact that over the course of the year I predicted the Indiana Fever on a game-by-game basis. I predicted the Indiana Fever to go 24 and 20.
Every single game I predicted throughout the year, I predicted the Indiana Fever to go 24 and 20. I predicted based on my game-by-game prediction, I had the Indiana Fever with the exact same record. I predicted 36 of 44 games wrong.
So yeah, me predicting Dantis won’t be great. She’s probably going to win MVP.
ALSO READ: LATEST TRENDING NEWS
